Kangaroos Passing Through the Red Lands of Monferrato: A Day in Conzano

An artwork about two metres by two, depicting a kangaroo and placed outside the old municipal porticoes in Piazza Australia: these are the first images that welcome those arriving in Conzano, but they are also the images that perhaps better than any other tell the story of the inhabitants of this charming municipality of Lower Monferrato. Indeed, if talking about the hills of Monferrato usually means plunging into the most authentic wine-growing culture, in Conzano the green of the Piedmontese hills blends with that of Mount Fox, a volcanic mountain in Ingham, Australia, near which many people from Conzano worked as sugar cane cutters. This town, in the Queensland region overlooking the Coral Sea, was a destination for emigrants from Conzano who, since the end of the nineteenth century, had left their native village behind to seek their fortune far from Italy.

Today Conzano, twinned with Ingham, is also called the town of the Australians, but it is above all Ingham that is the town of the Italians: more than half of the population is of Italian origin. The bond between the two nations is reinforced every year also thanks to the very popular Australian-Italian Festival which, with the skill of wave-riding surfers, each time brings a piece of Italy to Australia. One of the first monuments we admire during our walk in Conzano is the Civic Tower, the emblem of the town, built around 1200. This tower, made of blocks of shell-bearing tuff, typical of a shallow marine deposition environment full of marine fossils, was the last sight of the emigrants, who always kept it in their hearts even in front of the suggestive Wallaman Falls.

Some say it is no coincidence that a population that somehow came from the sea then turned its gaze towards the oceans when it felt the need to improve its living conditions far from home. During our tour of the historic centre, among streets that rise and fall and from which at times a breathtaking panorama over the surrounding hills opens up, we admired the Parish Church of Santa Lucia, known since the end of the twelfth century as the Church of Santa Maria di Conzano, but existing already before and remodelled several times over the course of history. The architectural heart of the town is Villa Vidua, the eighteenth-century residence of the Counts Vidua, restored after 1996, the year it was acquired by the Municipality.

Carlo Vidua, count of Conzano, who died in 1830 at just 45 years of age, was a well-known explorer, ethnographer and writer who also contributed to the founding of the Egyptian Museum in Turin. Moving to the hamlet of San Maurizio we discover the wonderful Parish Church, originally from 1400, built in late Gothic style and restored in the 1960s. The church of San Maurizio, founded in 1418 by Teodoro II, marquis of Monferrato, was consecrated in 1625 and preserves inside several important works of sacred art. We stay in the fascinating hamlet of San Maurizio also for our dinner, at the Ristorante Le Terre Rosse.

We settle into the large dining room and begin to enjoy a typically Monferrato dinner, with a rich Piedmontese starter, made among other things of San Daniele rosettes with melon, hand-chopped raw meat, Russian salad croissants, asparagus flans with savoury zabaione, leek quiche with robiola and almonds, and grilled pepper rolls with tuna and oregano cream. We follow these delicacies with four-cheese gnocchi and agnolotti sautéed in butter with truffle shavings and parmesan, as well as risotto in parmesan crisps with porcini mushrooms. Washing down these delicacies with the best typical wines of the area, including Cortese, Barbera and Grignolino, we taste an exquisite roast veal with black truffle, wild boar bites, as well as oven-baked lamb and roast porchetta. We finish on a sweet note with the house desserts, including trifle, torronata, chocolate slab and a lovely strawberry tart.

This lovely day taught us that to find authentic delights, sometimes you just have to follow the kangaroo trail...

Francesca Bertha

FOR INFORMATION:

Ristorante Le Terre Rosse Piazza Banda Lenti, 8 - Fraz. San Maurizio Conzano Monferrato (AL) Tel. 0142/925285